


Flour, Flour Everywhere

by themadlurker



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baking, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themadlurker/pseuds/themadlurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur catches Merlin doing a bit of stealth baking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flour, Flour Everywhere

Arthur is still cursing himself soundly for leaving his personal _nakiri_ knife behind as he lets himself in through the studio door. Technically, he shouldn't be able to get in at all, because Morgana had insisted on taking his passkey for the set away when she found him baking madeleines at 3 in the morning after a particularly lengthy round of hostilities with his father. Arthur bribed a new key card out of one of the security guards the next day, though, with the aid of a tupperware container filled from the survivors of Morgana's massacre of the madeleines. Admittedly, he'd eaten a few himself as well.

He's surprised to see a light on set and he reaches instinctively for the nearest available weapon — a broom as it turns out — while images of knife-pilfering desperadoes fly through his mind's eye. He's just about to bring the makeshift staff down on the intruder's head, which is bent over a cabinet — clearly searching for the expensive crock pots — when a cloud of flour goes up and Arthur is forced to lower the broom in favour of hacking up a lung. By the time his vision clears and he feels certain again that he is inhaling oxygen and not pastry flour, all hope of ambush is lost.

"Merlin?" he gasps out as soon as he is able, because there is something familiar both about the way his eyes are watering and the dark blur hovering behind the mess.

"Erm, hello," Merlin says, in what had better be an apologetic tone.

"Merlin, what the —" Arthur coughs "—ing hell are you doing here?"

A hand on his back helpfully wallops whatever was left of air out of his lungs, and then Merlin is retreating to a safe distance to clutch a mixing bowl. Arthur peers at the bowl curiously.

"— did you really add the eggs before the flour?" he asks in sudden bewilderment.

Merlin lifts his chin rebelliously. "It's how my mum makes them," he insists and glares as if daring Arthur to say something about it.

"Right," Arthur says. "Well, far be it from me to impugn your mother's method of making..." he trails off.

"Chocolate chip cookies." Merlin grins.

"Of course, I should have guessed it. What else would you use highest-grade pastry flour for?"

Merlin just shrugs. "You don't actually keep much grocery-aisle all-purpose around here. And I'm not going to lug a bag all the way down from my flat."

"— which brings us to the question of why you are, in fact, here at all."

Merlin stares hard at the label on the flour as if something between the words "pastry" and "flour" is perplexing him terribly.

"...Merlin?" Arthur asks.

"— down," Merlin mutters.

" _What_ did you say?" Arthur says in horrified disbelief.

"I said," Merlin repeats, clearly and defiantly, "my landlord _may_ have accused me of trying to burn the building down. He's threatened to have our oven removed if the smoke detectors go off one more time."

Arthur has to physically restrain himself from shoving Merlin at least twenty feet back from their industrial grade oven. The flour scattered around them takes on a new and menacing significance.

"I didn't burn anything down!" Merlin exclaims, as if he can see Arthur's arm behind his back reaching for the broom again in case he is called upon to defend his kitchen from fire, flood, or acts of Merlin. "It's just our useless smoke alarm! I swear it doesn't even blink when my flatmate sets toast on fire directly under it, but the moment I so much as touch the oven dials, it goes berserk. No," he adds emphatically in response to whatever he sees on Arthur's face, "I have never burned anything in the oven. I swear," he says, laying a solemn hand on Arthur's arm, "your casseroles are safe with me."

Arthur relaxes his grip on the broom enough to use it for its intended purpose and sweep up some of the catastrophe on the floor that Merlin has simply left lying about from his earlier mishap with retrieving the flour from the cupboard. He puts the broom away in the corner in an astounding display of inflated optimism about Merlin's ability to keep the preparation area clean and goes back to inspect his sous-chef's work.

"Really, you're going to sift it now?" Arthur asks, glancing in astonishment between the bowl over which Merlin is painstakingly shaking perfectly loose, fine flour and the mixing bowl in which two eggs have been whisked — barely — into a few dry ingredients.

"Maybe you'd like to do it yourself?" Merlin asks, proffering the mixing bowl.

"Oh no!" Arthur exclaims, holding up his hands deprecatingly. "I wouldn't dream of interfering. Please, go on."

He leans up against the counter, his vegetable knife forgotten as he watches Merlin scrunch his face together in concentration over the complicated task of finding the right measuring cup.

This isn't cooking like Arthur does on the show — it's messy, uncoordinated — Merlin forgets about the chocolate chips until he's already spooned half a dozen globs of dough onto the waiting baking sheet. He smacks himself in the forehead when he notices, then sticks his tongue out at Arthur who's been smirking since chocolate-free cookie #1 hit the pan.

By the time everything is in the oven (Arthur checks the temperature settings twice, just in case), Arthur has cause to fetch the broom again, which he hands over to Merlin with a significant look at the powder-coated floor. As Merlin repairs some of the wreckage he has caused among the ingredients (Arthur makes a mental note to remove any potentially incriminating evidence of their involvement before Morgana arrives the next morning), the air around them gradually fills with the scent of nutmeg and a wave of nostalgia breaks over Arthur before he can form the association as to why. His eyes drop closed unconsciously and he finds himself saying, "my father is a terrible cook, you know."

He opens his eyes again, expecting to find Merlin peering at him curiously, but from the way Merlin is still bent over the dustpan, Arthur isn't even sure he's heard. That, and the semi-dark of the kitchen, makes it seem safe enough to continue.

"I mean, he really is a terrible cook. He can about pull together a stew or something if you give him a recipe that's very carefully broken down into every imaginable intermediate step. One year — I think I was about ten — I decided I wanted a home-made birthday cake and had to write the instructions out myself, down to which drawer we kept the measuring spoons in. I think it still came out tasting like cloves. I learned a lot about what not to do in the kitchen though."

Merlin hums. "Most of what I learned at home about cooking had to do with when it wasn't a good idea to lick the spoon." He straightens up suddenly and directs a blinding grin at Arthur. "Bet you told him everything he'd done wrong too, and how much better you could've done it."

Arthur does his best to look offended, but gives way to a laugh after a moment because he can remember all to well his lecture to his father on the subject.

"For my eleventh birthday I got a store-bought cake and don't think he let me forget that it could have been catered if I weren't such a little swot."

A timer dings and Arthur looks in confusion at the oven because there's no way the cookies are ready yet. Still, Merlin grabs a plate and a spatula, yanks the oven door open, and fishes a couple of cookies out, before triumphantly letting the door snap shut.

Arthur raises an eyebrow at him. The cookies that Merlin is holding out to him have barely begun to solidify. Merlin shrugs at Arthur's bewilderment and picks at the semi-cooked dough, popping a mouthful in and making "hot! hot!" motions immediately after.

"'s bes' way," Merlin elaborates once he's swallowed. "Mom barred me from cookie dough after that time she had to drive Will and me to A & E over the Christmas cookies, but if you snuck in a few minutes into the cooking she wouldn't notice till it was too late — come to think of it, she probably cottoned on to what we were doing, but didn't mind so much if it wasn't raw egg."

Arthur looks suspiciously at the plate that Merlin is waving in front of him again, but gingerly pinches a bit of almost-cookie off between his fingers.

"What is it that makes me suspect it had as much to do with children being pigs as any property of the dough? The risks of raw egg in batter gets exaggerated."

"Done research into it, have you?" Merlin asks around another mouthful.

Arthur nods seriously. "I make excellent cookie dough, it would have been a shame to let that talent go to waste."

"The very best," Merlin agrees. "You skimp on the nutmeg too much, though."

Arthur gapes at him in shock.

"I use — I use _precisely_ the correct amount of nutmeg to produce a perfect cookie. I can't believe you —" he sputters in indignation.

"Well, these still need a few minutes. See if you can't whip something up in the mean time to go in once they're done. Then we can have a taste test."

Arthur's hands are already retrieving the ingredients he needs even while he mutters about the lack of qualification of certain persons present to recognize a gourmet chocolate chip cookie when it leaps down their throat to strangle them. When he turns around, Merlin shoves another chunk of semi-cooked dough into his mouth and Arthur has to pause in his diatribe to avoid choking.

Merlin licks a dab of chocolate off his own thumb and says contemplatively, "We can have a special cookie-dough round of competition if you like."

Sometime around the cinnamon, Arthur makes a mental note to suggest a Christmas cookie episode to Morgana. They can let the audience decides who makes the best cookies on this show.


End file.
